About
Shrine For Girls is a series of site-specific sculptural installations in different cities around the world created by artist Patricia Cronin, reflecting on the global plight of exploited women and girls. Originally conceived for the 2015 Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy, the show continues on an international tour including the United States, India, Ireland and Nigeria.
Exhibition
Shrine For Girls (United Kingdom), aprons, framed photograph and wood crate (Detail)
Mary Magdalene: The Exhibition From 25 June 2021 to 9 January 2022 Museum Catharijneconvent will be shining a spotlight on Mary Magdalen. This special exhibition will introduce the visitor to the rich, paradoxical and constantly evolving imagery surrounding this mysterious biblical figure. From the time of the New Testament to the present day, Mary Magdalen has proved to be an inexhaustible source of inspiration for artists.
The Magdalen’s many faces
Mary Magdalen is a woman of extremes. That has given rise to a multiplicity of interpretations: a wealth of representations, conspiracy theories and controversies. In her varied human guises she is the complete opposite of the unassailable purity of the Virgin Mary. She is associated with a blend of sexuality, sensuality and sin; a rich medieval cult of veneration; a beacon of hope; a feminist icon; relics that were fought over. And for that matter: was she or was she not married to Jesus? It is to this rich vein of historical reception that Mary Magdalen owes her many faces and voices, and it is they that can be seen and heard in the abundant variety of her depictions in art.
The Mary Magdalen exhibition will bring together choice works from the museum’s own collection and superb loans from museums at home and abroad. The exhibition will take place in the context of a multifaceted information programme. It will take you on a journey of discovery past the many faces of this extraordinary saint. We will be asking visitors to imagine how Mary Magdalen looks to them in their own mind’s eye.
National and international loans
In addition to masterpieces from Museum Catharijneconvent itself there will be loans of superb works from national and international museums. We have embarked on joint ventures with the Rijksmuseum, Teylers Museum in Haarlem and the Amsterdam Museum, which will be lending us works by Albrecht D�rer, Lucas van Leyden and Ary Scheffer. We have also asked for contributions from The National Gallery in London, Tate Britain, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The exhibition will be showing visitors how Mary Magdalen appeared down the ages, with connections between Old Master and contemporary art. Works by Marlene Dumas, David LaChapelle and Patricia Cronin will be playing an important part in this broad historical sweep.
Publication
The Mary Magdalen exhibition will be accompanied by a publication in both Dutch and English exploring the contexts in which the saint has been placed. It will be an attractive and accessible souvenir of the occasion, lovingly designed and illustrated with photographs of all the objects on show, as well as others related to them. There will be essays by prominent authors highlighting the subject from different angles. It will stand out among the literature on Mary Magdalen for its interdisciplinary approach linking both art and society, as well as past and present.
Museum Catharijneconvent
Visitors come to Museum Catharijneconvent to enjoy unique medieval masterpieces, a wonderful treasury and seventeenth-century paintings. The museum is housed in a centuries-old friary in the medieval heart of Utrecht, one of the best-preserved
monastic complexes in the Netherlands. An extraordinary experience awaits visitors wandering through the building. Time appears to stand still in its atmospheric corridors.
Museum Catharijneconvent sheds a light on the aesthetic, cultural and historic values of Europe’s Christian heritage. The object is to provide a deeper understanding of the world of today. Christianity has been an vital part of Dutch society since medieval times, and it affects us all. A knowledge of Christianity is essential to an understanding of the Netherlands, now and in the future.
Museum Catherijne Convent
Lange Nieuwstraat 38
3512 PH Utrecht
The Netherlands
June 25, 2021 - January 9, 2022
Images
Shrine For Girls, Museum Catherijne Convent, Utrecht, Installation View
Shrine For Girls, Museum Catherijne Convent, Utrecht, Installation View
Shrine For Girls, Museum Catherijne Convent, Utrecht, Installation View
Shrine For Girls, Museum Catherijne Convent, Utrecht, Installation View
Shrine For Girls, Museum Catherijne Convent, Utrecht, Installation View
Artist
Patricia Cronin is a New York based conceptual visual artist. Since the early-90's, Cronin has garnered international attention for her photographs, paintings and sculptures that address contemporary human rights issues of gender and sexuality. Slyly reinvigorating traditional images and forms with social justice themes, her critically acclaimed statue, "Memorial To A Marriage," a 3 ton Carrara marble mortuary sculpture of her life partner and herself was made before gay marriage was legal in the U.S., and has been exhibited widely across the country and abroad. Cronin began her career working for the Anne Frank Stichting installing the traveling exhibition "Anne Frank in the World" in Europe and the U.S.
Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at museums and galleries; including American Academy in Rome, Italy, Brooklyn Museum, Deitch Projects, Brent Sikkema, Woodlawn Cemetery, New York, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, and ConnerSmith, Washington, DC. In 2013 she was honored as the only contemporary artist ever invited to have a one-person exhibition at the Capitoline Museum's converted powerplant, Centrale Montemartini Museo in Rome, Italy.
Important international museum shows include: Massimiliano Gioni's NYC 1993: Experimental, Jet Set, Trash and No Star, New Museum, New York; Sean Glashan's Sh(OUT): Contemporary Art and Human Rights, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow; and Frank Wagner's Just Different, Cobra Museum, Amsterdam.
Her work is in numerous permanent public collections including; Deutsche Bank, New York; National Gallery of Art, Corcoran Collection, Washington DC; Perez Art Museum Miami, FL; Gallery of Modern Art; and Kelvingrove Art Galleries and Museum, Glasgow, and many private collections including David Zwirner and Chuck Close.
She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the prestigious Rome Prize in Visual Art from the American Academy in Rome, where she is now a trustee, an Andy Warhol Foundation Grant, an Anonymous Was A Woman Award, a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, and two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants, among others.
A compelling speaker, Cronin has lectured internationally, including: Smithsonian Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Victoria and Albert Museum and Christies. She is also the author of two books; Harriet Hosmer: Lost and Found, A Catalogue Raisonné (Milan: Charta, 2009) and The Zenobia Scandal: A Meditation on Male Jealousy (New York: Zing Books, 2013).
She received a BFA from Rhode Island College, was awarded a Battell Stoeckel Fellowship at Yale University, studied at Skowhegan School of Art and received a MFA from Brooklyn College. She has been on the graduate faculty at both Columbia University and Yale University, and is Professor of Art at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York since 2003.
Cronin lives and works in New York City.
CV download
Press
To view recent press, click on these links :
"Mary Magdalene - Crown Witness, Sinner, Feminist"
Historiek | July 23, 2021
"The Many Apparitions of Mary Magdalene"
Biografie Portal | July 4, 2021
"The Faces of Mary Magdalene: From Fallen Woman to Feminist Icon"
Light Home | June 25, 2021
Donate
Please help bring awareness of the international importance of girls and women by supporting Shrine For Girls with your tax-deductible donation. Your generosity will ensure the success of this project.
Here are three organizations where you can get more information and make a donation.
The Gulabi Gang (from Hindi 
"pink") is a group of Indian women activists responding to widespread domestic abuse and other violence against women in India. Recently they have gained international attention for taking matters into their own hands while the police and male-dominated society ignore and reinforce the plight of women in their country.
www.gulabigang.in
Justice For Magdalenes seeks to promote and represent the interests of the Magdalene women, to respectfully promote equality and seek justice for the women formerly incarcerated in Ireland's Magdalene Laundries and to seek the establishment and improvements of support as well as advisory and re-integration services provided for survivors.
www.magdalenelaundries.com
Camfed - Campaign for Female Education is an international non-profit organization tackling poverty and inequality by supporting girls to go to school and succeed, and empowering young women to step up as leaders of change. Camfed invests in girls and women in the poorest rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa, where girls face acute disadvantage, and where their empowerment is now transforming communities.
www.camfed.org
Catalogue
Mary Magdalene: Chief Witness, Sinner, Feminist
Zwolle and Utrecht: Waanders Publishers and Museum Catherijneconvent, 2021
(Dutch and English versions)
Lieke Wijnia, Ph.D., Editor, with contributions from Marieke van Schijndel, Caroline Vander Stichele, Robin Griffith Jones, Joan E. Taylor, Frank G. Bosman, Devon Abts, Marije de Nood, Joanne Anderson, Desir�e Krikhaar, and Diane Apostolos-Cappadona.
A comprehensive history of the portrayal of Mary Magdalen in art.
Mary Magdalen is a woman of extremes. Those extremes have given rise to a multiplicity of interpretations: a wealth of representations, conspiracy theories and controversies. This book introduces the reader to the rich, paradoxical and constantly evolving imagery surrounding this mysterious biblical figure. From the time of the New Testament to the present day, Mary Magdalen has proven to be an inexhaustible source of inspiration for artists.
Contact
info@shrineforgirls.org
